(Song Shenzong, Zhao Yan)
When Emperor Shenzong of Song was very young, he admired Wang Anshi.
As young as Zhao Yan may have been seven or eight years old, he was not yet an emperor at that time, but a child who had just begun to study Ming Li.
Of course, this kind of admiration is not the admiration of the object of love, but a kind of respect for intellectuals.
He has read many books of Wang Anshi, seen and heard many of Wang Anshi's words and deeds, and it can be said that he is a loyal fan of Wang Anshi.
Therefore, when Song Yingzong died of illness and Zhao Huan became the sixth leader of the Great Song Empire (that is, Song Shenzong), he immediately found Wang Anshi.
Of course, he did not want to spit out the likes in his heart for many years, but asked Wang Anshi to do things for him.
As a famous political, literary and thinker of the Northern Song Dynasty, Wang Anshi's popularity in the hearts of the northern Song subjects is self-evident.
And such a capable person, of course, the emperor must pull over to work for himself.
The problems faced by Song Shenzong, who had just ascended to the Great Treasure, were really not something he could solve by himself.
The most important of these is the financial problem.
The stability of a regime is finance as the first element.
The development of the dynasty is like starting a company, there is money to say anything, no money to do anything is difficult.
You may think that the lack of money and the Northern Song Dynasty should have little to do with it, because the Northern Song Dynasty can be said to be the most prosperous dynasty in the economic development of the dynasties, who has no money, the Northern Song Dynasty can not have no money,
Indeed, the Northern Song Dynasty was a big money maker, with net profits of several trillion yuan per year.
However, the Northern Song Dynasty was also a big spender, with a bloated bureaucracy with a lot of political expenses, and huge military expenditures that cost money year after year.
Distributing red envelopes to old neighbors Xixia and Liao Dynasty for many years is also a big expense.
If the Northern Song Dynasty could earn one trillion yuan a year, then it would spend two trillion yuan a year.
This is not called prosperity, this can only be called insufficient.
Of course, Zhao Yan did not want the national treasury to be unsubsumable, because if the treasury did not make ends meet, it meant that the emperor had no money to spend.
The emperor did not want to run out of money to spend, so finding Wang Anshi to solve the problem became the top priority.
Soon, Zhao Yan and Wang Anshi had a long all-night conversation.
The two of you are a word to me, Zhao Yan said, now our Northern Song Dynasty company owes a bunch of foreign debt, do you have any good solution?
Wang Anshi confidently said to the emperor, that is necessary, I can not only let the company pay off the foreign debt, I also plan to develop and grow the company in three years, Nadax listing in five years, and go straight to the world's top 500 in eight years.
At this point, Zhao Yan and Wang Anshi, the two monarchs, came together because of common ideals and beliefs, and they wanted to launch a vigorous change of law to completely change the status quo of the Northern Song Empire.
Wang Anshi's thinking was different from most people at that time, and many ministers, and even the emperor, believed that the reason for the weakness of the Northern Song Dynasty was because the money was spent too hard.
It is normal to pay salaries to officials, it is normal to pay grain to the army, and even to distribute red envelopes to the Western Xia and Liao Dynasty on time and on time, which is a fixed financial expenditure.
When it comes to adjusting the company's finances, most people think of open source throttling.
Throttling is to spend less money, if you spend less money, it is inevitable to deduct the welfare benefits of the company's employees, the money is saved, but the work efficiency has also become lower, and the enthusiasm of employees has also been eliminated.
Since you can't throttle, open source is the only way.
What is open source? To put it bluntly, it is to find a way to make more money.
So how to make the Northern Song government earn more money?
(About Wang Anshi)
Wang Anshi carried out a series of social reforms, and the contents of the reforms were many, rules and regulations, involving all aspects of the Northern Song Government, but it was summed up in one sentence:
Wang Anshi wants to be a philanthropist, he wants to distribute the existing money in the treasury of the Northern Song Government to the people in various ways, the people have start-up funds, they can earn money and create benefits, and Wang Anshi can extract part of the huge interests created by the people of the world and return to the treasury.
Therefore, no matter how you look at it, Wang Anshi's reform movement is a move that benefits the country and the people.
But we can expect that it is not an easy task to take money from the national treasury.
Taking money from the treasury means taking money from the money bags of the Northern Song Emperors and nobles, but these perennially pampered imperial relatives and nobles do not care at all about the development of the country and the lives of the people, and it is simply more difficult for them to pay money for charity and public welfare than to ascend to the heavens.
The change soon failed.
Clean liso's failure.
Because in that era, there were too few people who had the world in mind and wanted to serve the welfare of all the people, and the moment Wang Anshi decided to start changing the law, he was destined to oppose the officials of the entire Northern Song Court.
But the reason for the failure of the change of law is not only because it has been attacked by aristocratic forces and conservatives, but also because of a person, who is the original initiator of this change, Song Shenzong Zhao Yan.
The emperor, who had been bent on encouraging Wang Anshi to change his ways and become stronger, actually chose to back down in the face of the unanimous opposition of his courtiers.
This is equivalent to Zhao Yan is a shooter, Wang Anshi is an assistant, the two originally agreed to cross the tower together to kill the opposite shooter, Wang Anshi after crossing the tower found that the opposite auxiliary and the field came to support, calling on Zhao Yan to join hands in a fight to the death, Zhao Yan drove away.
Zhao Yan sold Wang Anshi.
He should have been the most solid backing for Wang Anshi's transformation, but when Wang Anshi's transformation was resisted, he not only did not choose to continue to support Wang Anshi, but instead cowered and turned against him.
Perhaps from the very beginning, Wang Anshi overestimated the emperor's heart and character.
Speaking of a thousand ways and ten thousand, it seems that the ultimate purpose of the emperor's attempt to launch a change of law was not to benefit the people of the Great Song Dynasty, but to consolidate his rule.
(The main content of Wang Anshi's transformation method)
He had thought that Wang Anshi, a migrant worker, would earn money for himself and consolidate his position through economic change, but he did not expect that his position would be shaken at the beginning of the change.
He clearly sensed that because he supported Wang Anshi's transformation of the law, the ministers of the government and the opposition, as well as the northern Song imperial family, began to be dissatisfied with him.
The day his imperial throne did not wait for the economic revitalization of the Northern Song Dynasty began to waver.
Since this is the case, what use does Wang Anshi have to him?
What is the significance of Wang Anshi's transformation method to him?
Therefore, Zhao Yan quickly abandoned Wang Anshi.
This was the most unexpected point for Wang Anshi.
The opposition of the conservatives had long been expected, because in all the dynasties and dynasties, the change of law would stir up a thousand waves, but the betrayal from his closest comrades-in-arms caught him off guard.
Wang Anshi was gone.
Although he voluntarily resigned, in a sense, he was forced away by Emperor Shenzong with scars and exhaustion.
The ninth year of Xi Ning, 1076 AD.
Everything recovers, spring is cold, but spring in the true sense is far from coming.
In this year, Wang Anshi resigned from all his positions in the Northern Song court and returned to his hometown, never to see Song Shenzong again.
The pair of good friends broke up completely.
The emperor was also sad.
Going back and forth like this, not only did not realize the original idea of revitalizing the economy of the Northern Song Dynasty, but also lost his best friend.
The days still had to go on, and Song Shenzong made a decision again.
That is to say, his former plan cannot be stopped, even without Wang Anshi, he must also reform and change.
(Yuanfeng restructuring)
He wanted the Northern Song company to grow and develop, rather than disappear in the long river of history.
Perhaps out of guilt for Wang Anshi, or out of resentment toward the conservative faction that had tried to obstruct him, he embarked on a tougher path of change.
Officials who opposed the change of law were punished heavily.
The imperial relatives and nobles who obstructed the implementation of the new law were also severely punished.
But this is already in vain.
Because Wang Anshi, who can really change the world, has withdrawn from the stage of history, Song Shenzong's change of law movement from behind the scenes to the front of the stage is just a performance to comfort himself.
Historians throughout history have mostly praised Song Shenzong's evaluation.
Because most of the emperors before the Song Dynasty were just mediocre and inactive lords, they may be wise or benevolent, but they never wanted to carry out drastic reforms to the Northern Song Empire in the true sense.
Song Shenzong was the first person who dared to "use a knife" against the Northern Song Dynasty.
But he was not a determined man.
Those who say that the law-changing movement during his reign changed the Northern Song Empire and put the empire on the road of rich countries and strong troops are, in my opinion, pure fiction.
Because whether it is the "Wang Anshi transformation method" led by Wang Anshi or the "Yuanfeng reform system" led by Song Shenzong later, it is essentially a failure.
And it's a complete failure.
These two changes did not have much practical effect except that the officials of the Northern Song government were choked by chickens and dogs.
On paper, I finally realized that I had to do something about it.
But who is going to be the one who walks?
The emperor is a noble man of the Ninth Five, and he can give orders and talk about ideals, but he will never work with the peasants in the fields.
Wang Anshi is a famous minister of the Northern Song Dynasty, and he can formulate strategies, arrange deployments, and lead everyone, but he must not personally go to the people to experience suffering.
And those conservatives and royal relatives, only their own interests in their eyes, they only want to keep their own piece of the cake, other than that, there is no great use.
Changing the law, it is still the common people who are tossing and turning.
In addition to this absurd change of law, Song Shenzong also made serious mistakes in military command.
As an idealist, he believes that confronting the enemy is like changing the law himself, as long as he is willing to do it and persist, he will definitely be able to achieve the final victory.
(Song-Xia War)
Therefore, he sent a huge army to attack Western Xia in the hope of achieving a decisive military victory, but unexpectedly, because of a series of military command errors, the five-way army was almost completely destroyed.
The Guerrilla-loving Western Xia army played the cumbersome Northern Song infantry.
The change of law was blocked, and the war was lost.
Such a blow completely destroyed Song Shenzong's fighting spirit.
He was no longer the scrappy young man he had been.
In the first month of the eighth year of Yuanfeng, the city of Tokyo is illuminated with lights, firecrackers are sounding one after another, and people are celebrating the arrival of the New Year.
Zhao Yan did not know that this would be the last Spring Festival in his life.
In March of the same year, Song Shenzong, who was only thirty-eight years old, died of illness and left this world with deep regret.
The new law for which he had fought all his life was abolished shortly after his death by his mother, Empress Gao.
It was an idealistic disillusionment, but for the Northern Song Empire, it was a new beginning.
This beginning will lead the Northern Song Dynasty to continue to move forward, towards an ending that no one can predict.